Why the archives of the Rwanda tribunal must remain in Africa
The authors of the article argue that giving Africans ready access to the kind of information contained in the archives will play a part in fighting the apathy that catapulted events in Rwanda from civil strife to genocide.
All persons interested in ending mass atrocities in Africa must take active interest in the question of where the archives of the ICTR – and, for that matter, the archives of the Special Court for Sierra Leone – are located. As the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) winds down – according to its Completion Strategy - by 2010, the major question now emerging is where its archives and records will be located.
The United Nations has established a committee headed by Richard Goldstone, former judge of the South African Constitutional Court and former prosecutor for the ICTR and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to assess both tribunals, consult various stakeholders and evaluate relevant issues to inform its decision as to where the archives of both organs would eventually be sited. The committee will develop a set of parameters for assessing proposed locations to host the archives and determining the location most suited for that purpose.
It has been suggested that Africa is an unsuitable location for the archives of the ICTR; that the archives of the ICTR and the ICTY should be unified in one place, and that “natural” location for these archives should be The Hague, considered to be the judicial headquarters of the world. One suggestion is that Africa does not have the skills or capacities to host such records or guarantee that they will be accessible to the rest of the world.
The ICTR has housed its own records for the past eleven years that the Tribunal has been in existence. For this period, obviously, those records have enjoyed confidentiality that is essential both for the functioning of the Tribunal and for assuring the safety of witnesses, victims, and suspects before the Tribunal. Those records have been quite secure. After the Court has completed its work, it will be necessary to also assure that the records are classified, stored, and managed in such a way to ensure that they will be accessible to all interested in learning from them.
The Goldstone Committee will most probably focus on identifying institutions that will manage the archives. That institution, we submit, must be located and based in Africa. The reasons for this are overwhelming.
The circumstances leading to the establishment of the ICTR are well worth recalling here. Apathy defined the response of the world to the Rwanda genocide. The Oxford English Dictionary defines apathy as: ‘lacking interest or enthusiasm’. The people of Rwanda lived the consequences of global apathy during those eventful months of 1994. The tragic events that occurred have been well-documented. As those events occurred, the rest of the world in Africa and beyond watched. Estimates of the number of people killed during the genocide are somewhere between seven hundred thousand to one million.
Eventually galvanised into action after its stupor, the world in the United Nations created a tribunal to try those most responsible for the international crimes committed during those months of horror. The tribunal was established in Arusha, a small northern city in Tanzania, a country that has not known civil war or strife. Both the United Nations and the now defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) established panels to investigate why they were unable to mobilise effective action against such atrocity.
Arusha has played host to the ICTR for over one decade. During this time, it has quietly established itself as The Hague of Africa, hosting three international judicial bodies, one international, one regional, and one sub-regional. In addition to the ICTR, Arusha has also become host to the East African Court of Justice and, most recently, to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. It is the headquarters of Africa’s emerging regional judicial architecture.
This regional judicial system requires close monitoring and study by and for the benefit of people in Africa. The atrocities in Rwanda were committed by Africans against Africans. The archives of the judicial process of accountability - which is what the ICTR is - are an African heritage that must remain in Africa. There are several institutions in Africa – universities, research institutes, and regional institutions – within the region that can host it.
If the ICTR’s archives were to be re-relocated outside the continent, to, say, The Hague, access to them will be denied to an overwhelming majority of Africans, including most victims and survivors. With each passing year, Africans find it more difficult to gain entrance to European countries. European regimes for entry visas for Africans have become an obstacle course that only the rich and well-connected are confident of completing, and only few can breach. For the rest, it is a matter of ‘break a leg’. The price of international air travel is forbidding for most Africans.
Quite clearly, to even contemplate transferring the archives of the ICTR to anywhere outside Africa is the easiest way to exclude Africans from access to them. It dishonours all those who were killed while the world watched; and ensures that we learn no lessons from what happened. African’s will cease to have a stake in this particular heritage.
Global apathy catapulted the events in Rwanda from civil strife to genocide. It is important that we avoid another form of apathy from denying Africans the records of those horrific events. Citizen groups, governments, civic leaders, academic communities, activists, survivors groups, regional institutions, and friends of Africa everywhere must take the work of the Goldstone Committee seriously and demand that the archives of the ICTR remain in Africa. African governments, especially the governments of the East African Community countries must come together to identify an institution to play this role and mobilise the resources to support it. Nothing less will suffice.
* Yitiha Simbeye is a Tanzanian expert in international criminal law. Chidi Odinkalu is a Nigerian lawyer
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